Question: Find an explicit formula for the geometric sequence $-1\,,-7\,,-49\,,-343,...$. Note: the first term should be $\textit{d(1)}$. $d(n)=$
Explanation: In a geometric sequence, the ratio between successive terms is constant. This means that we can move from any term to the next one by multiplying by a constant value. Let's calculate this ratio over the first few terms: $\dfrac{-343}{-49}=\dfrac{-49}{-7}=\dfrac{-7}{-1}={7}$ We see that the constant ratio between successive terms is ${7}$. In other words, we can find any term by starting with the first term and multiplying by ${7}$ repeatedly until we get to the desired term. Let's look at the first few terms expressed as products: $n$ $1$ $2$ $3$ $4$ $f(n)$ ${-1}\cdot\!{7}^{\,0}$ ${-1}\cdot\!{7}^{\,1}$ ${-1}\cdot\!{7}^{\,2}$ ${-1}\cdot\!{7}^{\,3}$ We can see that every term is the product of the first term, ${-1}$, and a power of the constant ratio, ${7}$. Note that this power is always one less than the term number $n$. This is because the first term is the product of itself and plainly $1$, which is like taking the constant ratio to the zeroth power. Thus, we arrive at the following explicit formula (Note that ${-1}$ is the first term and ${7}$ is the constant ratio): $d(n)={-1}\cdot{7}^{{\,n-1}}$ Note that this solution strategy results in this formula; however, an equally correct solution can be written in other equivalent forms as well.